In another of his notable picture books, Liang and Lo (1930), Wiese made new and exhilarating use of the interplay between two facing pages to picture the story of the young boy Liang and his newfound friend, Lo, who lives on a buffalo’s back, and their encounter with a dragon.

As one of twelve small picture books that constituted Macmillan’s “Happy Hour” series, Wiese’s Three Little Kittens (1928) contained innovative book design elements and lively lithographs that launched his successful career. He soon found employment with Colliers Weekly and shortly afterward illustrated one of his first books for Louise Seaman. In 1927 a well-traveled Wiese arrived in America looking for work. Their creative talents shifted the focus of picture books from Europe to the United States.īorn and schooled in Germany, Kurt Wiese later lived in China for six years, Australia for five years, and Brazil for four years. Wiese and colleagues Wanda Gag Berta and Elmer Hader, and Lois Lenski were some of America’s first prominent author-illustrators for children. So productive was he that he had more books than any other artist published in the fall of 1930. Wiese worked for the three preeminent juvenile book editors of the time, Louise Seaman of Macmillan, May Massee of Doubleday, and Ernestine Evans of Coward-McCann. Published in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Wiese’s first books were among the titles that established the genesis of the American picture book. Best known for having illustrated Marjorie Flack’s Story about Ping (1933) and Claire Huchet Bishop’s timeless retelling of a Chinese folktale, Five Chinese Brothers (1938), Kurt Wiese was a versatile artist who imparted vitality, emotion, and a keen design sense to the variety of media in which he worked. Kurt Wiese, one of the most prolific illustrators known in the field of American children’s literature, illustrated over three hundred books during a highly respected career that spanned more than four decades.

Li lun lad of courage